Just as the Glastonbury festival doesn't actually take place in Glastonbury, Woodstock didn't happen in Woodstock, either. The festival in Bethel, New York, took its name from a small town 43 miles away, where musicians such as Bob Dylan, the Band and Van Morrison began to congregate in the late 60s, as hippies left the cities.

The idea was to stage an Aquarian gathering of the tribes. The reality involved semi-amateur promoters, ticketless hordes, rain, mud, no toilets, an outbreak of hepatitis and food shortages. On the scale of one to Altamont, of course, the carnage at Woodstock was small beer. As the acrid notes of Jimi Hendrix's deconstruction of the Star Spangled Banner faded, and the sun rose and the dust cleared, the lows were swiftly forgotten. Half a million people managed to enjoy an impressive cross-section of the bands of the era and go skinny dipping in a lake without anyone, seemingly, even having their best purple flares nicked. The financial reality? Warner Brothers bailed out the documentary of the festival, which in turn bailed out the organisers, who ended up $1.4m (£865,000) in debt.